Thorgar's Arc

Chapter 3 of 13

Thorgar found the beast at the back of the cave. It was large and wrong-shaped, gray and soft, as if it had never grown a proper body. He struck it twice with his axes. It screamed and lunged. Its coils wrapped his legs and dragged him deeper into the dark. The water was rising fast behind him. He looked back for Harek's rope. It hung near the mouth, out of reach now, and the exit was already half drowned. Thorgar dug his heels into the stone. The beast pulled harder. Water climbed to his chest. He had one hour, and the hour was gone. He could feel the tide fill the cave. Soon there would be no air left in the low passage. He gripped an axe and hacked at the thing that held him. High above, Harek felt the rope go slack. He leaned into the flooding mouth. "Thorgar," he called. His voice came back flat off the wet rock. No answer. He did not soften it for himself. If the dwarf did not surface, the dwarf was dead. Then a shadow crossed the water. The great eagle dropped again, brown and gold, and struck near the cave mouth. It stood there, tearing at a fish where the last low rock still showed. Inside, Thorgar saw the bird's shape against the gray light. The bird fed where the floor was still highest. That was the last dry patch. That was the way out. He stopped fighting to reach the rope. He turned toward the eagle instead. He swung both axes into the beast's coils. Once. Twice. Steel bit deep. The thing thrashed and its grip loosened. Thorgar wrenched a leg free, then the other. He drove one axe up under the soft head and pushed with all his weight. The beast shuddered and went still. Dark blood spread through the water. Thorgar dropped one axe. He could not swim and hold both. He kept the other and pushed off the floor toward the eagle's rock. Water closed over his head. He kicked. His lungs burned. His hand found stone, then air. He surfaced under the last open patch of the cave mouth, where the bird had shown him the floor still climbed. Harek's rope slapped the water beside him. Thorgar caught it. The shipwright hauled, hand over hand, and dragged him onto the ledge. Thorgar lay on the cold rock and coughed seawater. The eagle beat its wings and lifted off into the wind. "It's dead," Thorgar said. "I left an axe in it." Harek looked at the drowned mouth. "Then the route's open. I sail when you say." He said nothing else about the axe or the water. Thorgar sat up. The beast that killed his brother was gone. Now he had a shipwright who would sail, and a coast full of sailors who no longer had a reason to fear the sea. He needed a crew. He had earned the right to ask.